Field note
Marketplace crops that cut the handle
2025-11-04
We compared six bag families across a merchant's own storefront and their marketplace stall. On the brand site, the first image showed the full silhouette, handle included. The marketplace thumbnail used a tighter square that cropped the handle off at the rivet.
Shoppers on the stall asked, in reviews, whether the bag had a shoulder strap. It did. The photograph had simply removed the evidence. Return notes mentioned 'smaller than expected' even when dimensions were printed below the fold.
The catalog fix was dull on purpose: a marketplace-first frame with a few centimetres of air above the handle, and a second image that already lived in the brand shoot. No new sample run.
Catalog performance on marketplaces is often a crop decision. If the object that does the work is missing from the first tile, conversion analysis should start there, before anyone rewrites the title.